We have not looked at SimpleMap yet so we can't comment on what is different. It is NOT a fork of that and we did not borrow heavily from their description pages. We started as a fork of the original Store Locator when that author went on haitus and we needed some patches. We've since modified the system heavily based on user feedback of our original post.

@lgedeon Both SimpleMap & Store Locator LE/Plus are forks of our original Store Locator plugin (conceived in April '08, released in December '08), thus why they may have some similarities; they're offspring of the same product -- siblings so to speak.

SimpleMap was derived from Store Locator starting around February/March '09 it appears, and Store Locator LE/Plus was derived from Store Locator around December '10 it appears. However, in comparison, each have somewhat different business models.

But you're right, documenting when it's a fork is helpful to avoid confusion amongst users. But it's looking like the respective developers continue to work towards differentiating themselves, which is helpful to all.

@averyfisher Thanks for your concern/defense of Store Locator. Fortunately or unfortunately, such is life in the open source software space, but guess who ultimately benefits the most -- you, the customer.

Maybe even one day, we'll all join forces to make one superb store locator, but for now, it's interesting to watch how each product develops.

Interesting conversation. I've never looked at the code for the plugins mentioned above. I acquired SimpleMap from the original developer about this time last year. She was going to stop development so we took it over. I was not aware of the above claims and cannot confirm / deny if it was forked or not.

We have put hundreds of hours into it since last summer and have re-factored almost the entire plugin in 2.0, leaving only the look and feel of the General Options and Help page untouched. We've since converted it to use custom post types and have added quite a few features.

I embrace the open source philosophy. If either of the plugin developers above want to look at my code and identify anything lifted from their plugin, I'd be more than willing to attribute or remove it.

There's plenty of room for all of us in the WordPress economy. My email is always open: glenn - fullthrottledevelopment - com

We forked our copy from Store Locator & have been upfront about it. In fact that was the lead description up until the last few releases where we clearly stated we had based our work on Viadat's Store Locator and the product was a fork. Due to repeated requests to assist with the original Store Locator and the fact that we have diverged on 50% of the code (or more) at this point we recently removed that notice.

The only reason we started a fork in the first place was we needed fixes & features on the original Store Locator plugin and couldn't get a response to our email pings last winter. Given the tight deadline we were under we patched & extended the product to the point we thought some other Store Locator users may have found it useful.

Since then we've diverged further from Store Locator not in an attempt to gain market share (or take it from the original concept) but solely due to client and/or customer input. We also keep all of our code open source including the commercial Store Locator Plus edition even though significant portions of that code are original, the commercial product is no listed in the directory at WordPress, and thus does not need to be GPL.

We prefer to support open source and let people build on the work of others that led the way. Sometimes that means people are building on our work, sometimes we build on theirs.